44 posts tagged "Thom Browne"
An A+ For Architecture
Last night, Architizer—an online architecture network for professionals and dabblers alike—hosted its inaugural A+ Awards gala at New York City’s Cedar Lake. And, according to the site’s CEO Marc Kushner, the event not only aimed to honor talents like Richard Meier, who won the lifetime achievement award, but also to make architecture more approachable for those in other creative realms. “We designed an event to help break architecture out of the echo chamber, so that other people can jump in and relate to it,” Kushner told Style.com. Last night’s accolades honored a total of eighty-seven buildings in more than fifty two categories—including Jaklitsch/Gardner’s cubic Marc Jacobs flagship in Tokyo and THEVERYMANY’s Louis Vuitton x Yayoi Kusama pop-up store at Selfridges in London.
“What they do is really amazing—it’s a great resource,” said attendee Joseph Altuzarra, one of many fashion designers present (Thom Browne and Yigal Azrouël also stopped by). Altuzarra offered that he has his own unique tie to architecture. “We have this factory in the north of France that does jersey—it was designed by Le Corbusier. Everything was done so carefully, it’s really beautiful.”
Cooper-Hewitt to Honor Behnaz Sarafpour
This morning, the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum announced the winners of its prestigious National Design Awards—even though the official bestowals won’t occur until October. This year’s recipient of the Fashion award is none other than the Iranian-born and New York-based Behnaz Sarafpour.
Sarafpour’s line, which she founded in 2001, has evolved into a well-rounded womenswear range that fuses feminine cuts with innovative textiles. Her Fall 2013 collection, in particular, might have caught the eye of Caroline Baumann, Cooper-Hewitt’s acting director. The lineup featured classic silhouettes turned modern via neoprene and piled velvet. Previous winners of the honor include Thom Browne (2012), J. Mendel (2011), Rick Owens (2007), and Tom Ford (2003).
Thom Browne’s Blast From The (Recent) Past
With next week’s Met Gala fast upon us, get ready to see plenty of punk fashion hitting stores. Savvy retailers and designers are jumping on the bandwagon, and issuing new bits of nouveau punkery, like Moda Operandi’s 100-piece strong capsule collection of punk-inspired pieces from the likes of Givenchy, Balmain, and Vivienne Westwood. Thom Browne, for his part, already did a punk collection—back in Fall 2012. That little bit of clairvoyance won’t stop him from getting back into the seasonal mood now. In honor of the exhibition, Browne will reissue five spiked, safety-pinned, and studded pieces from the Fall ’12 collection, like the gray cashmere chesterfield and safety-pin blazer, in limited edition exclusively at his New York store. Look for them May 2nd, where they’ll go for $9,190 (coat) and $8,915 (jacket). Punk is now a luxury, and a few remaining originalists might grumble and prefer to shred and safety-pin their own jackets. But Browne’s methods always found fans in punk places. Malcolm McLaren himself was a customer till the end of his days.
PLUS: Thom Browne, Visionary? The Pratt Institute says yes >
At Pratt, an Award for Thom Browne, and a Stage for New Talents
Little-known fact: Pratt Institute boasts America’s longest-running fashion-education program. With alums such as Betsey Johnson and Jeremy Scott, Pratt reps a unique vanguard in the world of design—and last night, at its 114th annual senior fashion show, some talented new names were added to its stable.
Pratt headlines its yearly runways with the bestowal of its Visionary Award—an accolade honoring fashion-world luminaries, who needn’t be directly linked to the school. Last night’s recipient? The singular Thom Browne. “It’s overwhelming,” Browne told Style.com, “when you get to do what you do, and have an important institution, with such a strong reputation in the world of design, recognize it, it’s…it’s humbling.” Presenting the award, Hamish Bowles teased his friend. Referring to Browne’s growth over the aughts, he said, “Thom became something of a performance piece himself, a one-man Gilbert & George, in his stiff, tailored buttoned-up suits with the odd proportions.” Expect to see the designer in exactly this silhouette at the Costume Institute’s upcoming Met Ball—though likely with a punk twist. “I’m going with Taylor Tomasi Hill,” Browne revealed with a smile.After the ceremony, it was on to the show, where front-rowers, including Fern Mallis, Bill Cunningham, and Bibhu Mohapatra, were treated to a lineup heavy on digital prints, washed-out pastels, a lot of white, and ultra-long silhouettes. Two designers stood out in particular: Raya Kassisieh (above, left), with her sometimes soft, sometimes sharp Brave New World brides (“It’s kind of like nouveau Mugler,” whispered Patrick McMullan), and Madeline Gruen (above, right), with her indigo colonial toile prints and glittering embroideries that blended humor with notes of Alexander McQueen and Liberace. Gruen won the night’s other big prize—a $25,000 grant funded by the Liz Claiborne Art Ortenberg Foundation.
RISD’s Feeling Fine and Dandy
The dandy: It’s a term we hear on loop, it seems, when it comes to horn-rim-wearing street-style stars and all things bespoke or buttoned-up. But the dandy has a far richer history than the current zeitgeist lets on; one that includes the likes of George “Beau” Brummell—an arbiter of men’s fashion in eighteenth-century England who was known for being “extremely neat”—King George IV, Oscar Wilde, and Andy Warhol (whose paint-splattered shoes are pictured below). On April 28, Providence’s RISD Museum of Art will celebrate the term with the opening of its summer exhibition, Artist/Rebel/Dandy: Men of Fashion.
“As we delved into the subject of the dandy in art, literature, and history on an intellectual level, we felt a strong need to focus on the tangible garments worn by dandies past and present,” said Kate Irvin, the museum’s curator of costume and textiles. The selection runs the full temporal gamut—with current provocateurs such as Thom Browne and Waris Ahluwalia featured alongside more archival names, like Stephen Tennant (above, left), Charles Baudelaire, Richard Merkin, and Malcolm McLaren. As assistant curator Laurie Brewer details, dandyism is as diverse as it is distinct, and it’s not strictly limited to one bracket of dressing. “I am always smitten with the extraordinary feat of what a bespoke suit can be—but I also fully appreciate Rick Owens’ radical take on menswear—hard and romantic, masculine and feminine.” Owens is also featured in the exhibit, lending credence to the sartorial vastness encompassed by the term. Expanding on the subject, the curators concluded, “there may be boundaries and rules that one feels compelled to follow when dressing, but one must always recognize that they are elastic.” Alongside the exhibition comes the release of a corresponding illustrated book, which features essays by the likes of Thom Browne, Glenn O’Brien, and Style.com’s editor in chief, Dirk Standen.
Artist/Rebel/Dandy: Men of Fashion will run from April 28 through August 18 at the RISD Museum of Art .